Nilpferdschaf wrote:WE ARE (TEACHERS)(LEARNERS)(SCIENTSTS)THIS FORTRESS SWARMS WITH (TEACHERS)(LEARNERS)(SCIENTISTS)AND I AM THEIR LEADER (RULER)

I guess that means the words for teacher, student and scientist are the same in Beanish? Interesting, it says a lot about their culture if they don't make a distinction between them.

I don't think "learners" should be translated as "students" but as "teachers". It is them who cause the learning in the students.Then it's "teachers", "teacher" and "scientist", which could be explained with an extended version of apprenticeship. Or Hairdo is searching for the right word.

Yaay Pope-

Uhm, papal decree, uhm. Redundapuppies! I would like to see redundapuppies!

Spoiler:

For those who do not have the software available to do this yourself: The cheezburger network helps.Choose a puppy, click select, enter redundancy, click preview, download picture, add as attachment to your post, be happy.

Redundant redundapuppies.

Mikeski wrote:A "What If" update is never late. Nor is it early. It is posted precisely when it should be.

It's another brief de-lurk. I've been watching the thread and the comic since the very beginning (I appreciate there's vocabulary and abbreviations I should be using here, but don't feel that I've done enough posting to actually use them!), and just wanted to mention at this exciting time in Time that I have been so impressed by the thread, its content and also its conduct.

The working out a location from the star map was a delight - I had no comprehension of how accurate that could be both in terms of position and date, and it certainly seems to be playing out (unless we too are being played with...)

SImilarly the mapping, the language analysis and the various TIme viewers are all a joy. It has particularly tickled me since the dawn of Time that Randall must know his audience pretty well. To know that it is possible to put a single frame on his site every 30 mins (then 60 mins), and rely on the audience to create tools such as the aubronwood and geekwagon viewers must be very gratifying, and must go some way to rewarding the amount of work which he must be putting in.

On a similar vein, I would love to think that the 'earthquake knocks part of sandcastle down while precipitating events which will lead to demise' theory is true

If you look back at the beginning of the OTC, the sea is pretty much static for the first couple hundred frames. It doesn't really start rising noticeably until after Cuegan come back from swimming, I'd say at frame 190 (I'm going by the Geekwagon numbering here). If you go backwards from there, you'll see a bit of sandcastle fall down at the far left between frames 172 and 173 while Cuegan are still in the water out of frame.

That could be an indication of weak seismic waves from a distant earthquake reaching their area. The part that fell was one of the newest sections that Cueball added, so the sand would still be soft and wet. Since both Cueball and Megan were swimming at the time, they wouldn't have felt the tremors, so it would just look like part of the castle fell under its own weight. The sea starts rising a short time later, and appears to have slowly risen faster over time, which would match pretty well with a flood that widens its passage as more blockage is swept away by the floodwaters.

because that would show that the whole thing has been planned out in such meticulous detail that it makes me shiver!

I don't know how all this is going to translate into stuff that can be made available from the xkcd store - but I'm certainly going to be patronising it! I suspect that - in the same way as my 'sudo make me a sandwich' shirt (xkcd 149) - the merch will encourage strangers from all walks to chat briefly about a shared theme.

It is possible that the feel of the thread will alter a bit, but that's a natural side-effect of there being more to talk about, and so less time for Popeing, Knighting and the like. That's different, but not necessarily a disaster. It is worth noting that it's a very long thread which is chock full of considered comment and really hasn't got flamey. As a very long time lurker I would like to heartily congratulate the assembled company for that, and wish us all a nice long time continuing to read and speculate on the story.

You have (as they say) all done very well. I am now returning to silent waiting

b2bomberkrh wrote:Although it doesn't help the language question, I will point out that the 10,000 time gap isn't quite the relevant time gap. Languages have become more and more stable as technology has progressed. Absent any calamity, I would expect the languages of the future to be close enough to modern day languages to be quite recognizable. Linguistic drift is much more prevalent in the absence of mass media, and global communication. More important is the time frame from when modern technology was lost. Obviously, we have no clue whatsoever about this, but at least it means we shouldn't assume that the language has changed significantly. My own opinion is that it's going to be impossible to crack the language if it isn't based around some current language. My parents work for an organization that learns languages from scratch in remote tribal locations, and it takes a linguist years of living among a people to learn the language effectively enough to translate it.

I'm not sure I agree with this. If anything, the rapid advance of technology has accelerated the processes of new word creation and old word obsolescence, so I think the opposite might be true. Take a book or a song or a movie from today and compare it to one from 20 or 30 years ago, for instance, and there's a noticeable difference in vocabulary. Is there real evidence that languages are becoming more stable, or are you just speculating? Even if language evolution has slowed down, it would have to slow down a lot for us to have a chance of relating Beanish to a current language. Even a tenfold change in rate of evolution might not be enough, as our language today would be complete gibberish to anyone living in the year 1013.

ETA: I do think GLR will make it possible to decipher Beanish, though. He's very seaish in a does-what-it-wants kind of way.

Dear Megan, how do you think the Martians feel? Only if they were on Olympus Mons or some other extremely high part of Mars they're going to keep dry when I finish my online course in opening and controlling Einstein-Rosen bridges.

Mikeski wrote:A "What If" update is never late. Nor is it early. It is posted precisely when it should be.

So I'm not yet settled on how I will modify the map from now on... the small-scale data is still most interesting, but I could extend in all directions to include the Beanie's data.... and again to include topographic data from all Earth. How can all this be integrated in only one map? radial log scale? tools like openstreetmap? using three different pages?I'll be struggling to keep the "mouseover panorama" also, but it's the occasion to try different features...

In any case, the current map will be kept as "pre-revelation map".

Btw, if the mediterranean has dried out, then can we conclude that semencancercaffeinatedbaconbabiesonice/sand is actually... salt? has the hypothesis already been up during the first ages? Can someone build large structures in salt?

teddy, aka nickjbor wrote:Are you the fellow who runs the mapuh, do you need some help 'updating' it I got free time.

I'm not good at delegating (and I guess you didn't look at the code before offering help:P) but yes I could use some help^^The discussions on how the map should evolve can be moved to the [currently outdated] mapping page of the wiki, anyone can join For technical realization, we'll get a clearer picture of how to do things once we know what to do, so I might be able to do that on my own or need to ask for help... we'll see!

Latent22 wrote:OK OTVO voting time! This is now quarter final voting to see who goes onto the next round and submit a new set audition.Pick your favorite Cueball and Meagan Voice.Results will be displayed here

To Vote just listen to the audio and quote my post. Leave only the top few lines of my post please which has a link back to this post where the results will be updated. Then state who you vote for and why.

edfel wrote:Btw, if the mediterranean has dried out, then can we conclude that semencancercaffeinatedbaconbabiesonice/sand is actually... salt? has the hypothesis already been up during the first ages? Can someone build large structures in salt?

It's probably very sandy salt and old plastik with a lot of dead organic material underneath, not sure if that's a good sand castle building material, but people have made salt sculptures. Maybe if you mix it with a bit of water the cristals fuse together...? The ones you find online don't look nearly as big as their castle though.

I feel sad for BlitzGirl, she has spend so much time here and now she's away to be a bridesmaid all this exposition appears. She even misses the deciphering of Hairdo's words, while she spend so much time indexing Beanie.

Mikeski wrote:A "What If" update is never late. Nor is it early. It is posted precisely when it should be.

b2bomberkrh wrote:Although it doesn't help the language question, I will point out that the 10,000 time gap isn't quite the relevant time gap. Languages have become more and more stable as technology has progressed. Absent any calamity, I would expect the languages of the future to be close enough to modern day languages to be quite recognizable. Linguistic drift is much more prevalent in the absence of mass media, and global communication. More important is the time frame from when modern technology was lost. Obviously, we have no clue whatsoever about this, but at least it means we shouldn't assume that the language has changed significantly.

Languages become more stable over history because we have more widespread and durable literacy and faster and longer-range communication, meaning there is less fracturing of languages communities (because spatially distant speakers can stay in touch) and slower change within each community (because through literacy, temporally distant readers and writers can "stay in touch" too).

Since we don't know when modern technology was lost, we have no idea when significant linguistic drift began occurring. Assuming the 10ky future estimates are correct, and we have no idea when between now and then modern technology was lost, we have between 0 and 10k years of linguistic drift to account for. Even taking the mean of those and assuming 5k years of linguistic drift... that's still long enough to get the equivalent divergence of the Indo-European languages that were present around the 14th century. So even assuming somehow everyone in the Mediterranean area spoke the same language when this divergence started, you could easily get neighbors speaking languages as different as Latin and Farsi in those 5k years.

Should we not forget about the 10 000 years now? If we have to wait for Gibraltar straights to close and then open again - then we are faaar into the future! Or a long way back...

Besides, like CharmQ I wonder if there are data supporting that the linguistic drift is slowing down? Swedish is drifting quite quickly nowadays... That fragmentation is slowing down (or rather reversing) in the modern world is quite natural though.

The past is full of traps, charms and mirages, but if you just keep up with with what you are doing it will all be fine.

b2bomberkrh wrote:Although it doesn't help the language question, I will point out that the 10,000 time gap isn't quite the relevant time gap. Languages have become more and more stable as technology has progressed. Absent any calamity, I would expect the languages of the future to be close enough to modern day languages to be quite recognizable. Linguistic drift is much more prevalent in the absence of mass media, and global communication. More important is the time frame from when modern technology was lost. Obviously, we have no clue whatsoever about this, but at least it means we shouldn't assume that the language has changed significantly.

Languages become more stable over history because we have more widespread and durable literacy and faster and longer-range communication, meaning there is less fracturing of languages communities (because spatially distant speakers can stay in touch) and slower change within each community (because through literacy, temporally distant readers and writers can "stay in touch" too).

Since we don't know when modern technology was lost, we have no idea when significant linguistic drift began occurring. Assuming the 10ky future estimates are correct, and we have no idea when between now and then modern technology was lost, we have between 0 and 10k years of linguistic drift to account for. Even taking the mean of those and assuming 5k years of linguistic drift... that's still long enough to get the equivalent divergence of the Indo-European languages that were present around the 14th century. So even assuming somehow everyone in the Mediterranean area spoke the same language when this divergence started, you could easily get neighbors speaking languages as different as Latin and Farsi in those 5k years.

Should we not forget about the 10 000 years now? If we have to wait for Gibraltar straights to close and then open again - then we are faaar into the future! Or a long way back...

Besides, like CharmQ I wonder if there are data supporting that the linguistic drift is slowing down? Swedish is drifting quite quickly nowadays... That fragmentation is slowing down (or rather reversing) in the modern world is quite natural though.

I'm by no means an expert on the predictions of the long night, but as I understand it OTT astronomers calculated the ~10000 years in the future estimate based on how far certain stars have moved from their Outside positions. If we were in the even more distant future, these stars would have moved even further.

Swein wrote:Should we not forget about the 10 000 years now? If we have to wait for Gibraltar straights to close and then open again - then we are faaar into the future! Or a long way back...

No, not at all. Somebody said earlier that it would take about 2000 years for the Mediterranean to completely dry out (which has only happened partially here). Now the big question is what (tectonic drift is out with this timeframe) caused the Gibraltar straight to close again (and probably also caused the collapse of civilization as we know it...), but if that happened somehow, 10000 years is more plausible than ever. Also they're in an old castle at a place that's going to be an island again at exactly the spot where todayH there's a castle on an island...

I think Rosetta is trying to figure out how to tell Megball their home is already flooded, and isn't enjoying it.

Neil_Boekend wrote:I feel sad for BlitzGirl, she has spend so much time here and now she's away to be a bridesmaid all this exposition appears. She even misses the deciphering of Hairdo's words, while she spend so much time indexing Beanie.

We knew it would happen ─ every time BlitzGirl leaves, the mustard hits the fan. When she announced she'll be away for an extended period, we knew the mustard would get deeper than usual.────────────────By the way: New Othercomic. According to quantum mechanics, it's not worth reading.

EDIT: Ninja'd (appropriately enough) by higgs-boson.Chirpin' comic's up for hours and nobody says a word, then we both post within three minutes...

Neil_Boekend wrote:I feel sad for BlitzGirl, she has spend so much time here and now she's away to be a bridesmaid all this exposition appears. She even misses the deciphering of Hairdo's words, while she spend so much time indexing Beanie.

I can see it, though. Full church/lawn gathering, bride & groom standing front & center, and one bridesmaid staring at her tablet during the ceremony, occasionally calling out "weird" or "neat" .